The Big Shift Continues

A persistent theme of the past 30 years is the decline in career opportunities with traditional big company employers. The notion that a person will have one, maybe two, employers in an adult lifetime seems so, well, 1970.

In 2008, a viral video, Shift Happens, became an Internet sensation. The short video, set to music, revealed a number of eye-catching trends and “shifts” for which the students of 2008 and 2009 would need to prepare. One of the creators’ factoids was that “The U.S. Department of Labor estimates that today’s learners will have 10 to 14 jobs by their 38th birthday.”

In the 2021 annual report from Google of trends in web search, one in particular stands out as the pandemic continues: “…searching for how to start a business more than how to get a job this year.” Maybe the shift from one or two employers to multiple serial jobs is progressing to entrepreneurship as a preferred career path. What do today’s students need to be successful in this new environment?